Title: "Break, break, break"
Rating: M
Warnings: Dark themes
Timeframe: AU, vaguely post-TESB
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade
Summary: "But the tender grace of a day that is dead / Will never come back to me." Losing meaning in the dark. Dark Luke/Mara AU, one-shot.
There is a corner of the Palace that sits in the shadow of the Emperor's Spire, hunched in its dark protection, shielded from the light that glares across the rest of the never-sleeping world. In the hours of night its blackness is close to complete.
In that darkness the marks on the hands that lift to his could be engine grease, oil or dirt. Residue of rust, perhaps.
He lets his own hands drift out, flickering from the contact. "Mara," he whispers. "Blood."
She blinks and looks at him, then looks down. "Oh," she says, and turns away, doing something with her hands and the hem of the panelled jacket that sits over her bodysuit.
"Rough mission," she says, turning back, her lips quirking.
Rough blood, he thinks. Human blood, dried. He rubs his own fingers on his tunic, on his stiff trousers. The shadow that darkens them both makes his hands seem unclean. He shows her his own smile.
Her lips look like crushed petals, like bruises. Her eyes fall as pools of shadow.
It frightens him how much he hates her, sometimes. He hates her in that moment. But he's attracted, too, in equal measure, and he grips her shoulders and kisses her.
Their lips meet with force. She rocks back slightly, then digs her fingers into his back, blunt nails gouging enough to hurt. He bites her lip, just a little. Just enough. When he leans back, she looks confused. He laughs. After a moment, she laughs with him.
He thinks it's possible she thinks it's a game. Maybe it is.
For a professional killer, she's had a sheltered life. No lovers. No friends.
He looks at her and almost regrets the violence of a moment ago. Her hair creates a lie in its softness, curling around her face. He still feels the attraction. He kisses her again, softly. She starts to laugh, touches her lips, looks uncertain. He hates her. He hates himself.
He looks off into the thick dark shadow outside the building.
"Where's your father?" she asks.
"Don't know," he says.
"Is he in the Palace?"
"Looking for information?" he says harshly.
"I'm not," she says, then halts. He gets to his feet, standing with his back to her.
She gets to her feet too. Her face is reflected by his shoulder, an indistinct blur, pale. She stands motionless. He doesn't move.
Then she turns away.
He whirls. "Where are you going?" he demands. He lifts two fingers and blocks the door with the Force, and she stops short.
She glances at him. "Let me out."
He walks across to her. "Where are you going?" His voice is not plaintive; no. There is not an edge of desperation there.
"Somewhere else." She's not looking at him, her gaze directed somewhere past him, into the darkness. "What's wrong with you?" The words burst, blunder at him; there is weight in her flicked glance.
He feels mostly anger now, and it's a relief. He grabs her. She moves quickly, her fist connecting with his left arm, near the shoulder. White pain blossoms down his side, and he hisses and drops back, arm cradled to his side.
She watches, dispassionate. "I thought you were favouring your right."
He curls over the pain, sinking backwards.
She bends with him. "What is it?" she asks.
It's his father, of course. It always is. He holds up his right hand, fingers spread. "Do not," he says, "touch me."
She tilts her head. The brightness is no longer there; instead it's something cold and reserved that views him from her eyes.
"I hate you," he says. "I hate you all."
"Us all?" she echoes.
"Empire," he says.
She looks down at him.
"You can go now," he says.
She bends, right down to his level. She eases over him with her lean body, her jacket with its hard panels and her sleek bodysuit, a smell like perfume, something light he can't identify. He tries to pull away but she leans against his side, immobilising him. He's pinned, and she kisses him. Her lips move over his, taking him, knowing him. Breaking him, again.
"You're one of us," she says. "You've come too far for anything else."
He presses his face to her shoulder. No moisture leaks from his eyes. "Leia," he breathes, and the word is a name, and more: a directionless plea, a withered request for benediction, a faded cherished shred of something now gone.
Her body tightens, softens, lines of skin and bone. Deceptive. "It's too late," she whispers to him, fingers moving through his hair. "They won't take you back."
He jolts slightly, fingers opening, muscles tensing. "Don't."
"Traitor," she says again, gently. "The last time, they tried to kill you."
He leans forward against her, rocks. Beru held him like this once, after nightmares of red-shaded killing, blood and screams and hissing breath and the fall of light like death. He experiences the memory with dream-like vividness, the sweat and sweet salt-herb scent of Beru, the heat and silence of his childhood home.
Here is silence, and no heat. Scents are faded and edged in blood. He's sick with killing, and the scars still hurt. "I hate you," he says.
She smiles, her cheek sliding to his, lips by his ear. "You don't hate," she says. Her fingers spread through his hair, easing his head down, against her shoulder. It's a gesture of control, a facsimile of affection by someone who has never known it. He allows it, then taps his anger and breathes it out. She gasps as her fingers spasm, and he twists, gets to his feet and away from her.
She sits up, looks at him in confusion and faint hostility as he circles the borders of the dark room, stopping by a lightless window overlooking a sea of shadow.
Bespin was orange when he fell. Orange and red, mist from the blood he coughed, choking and dying as he flew, plummeted. Realising – he didn't want to die.
The shuttle that saved him was white. His father's gloved hand, extended, lifting him from his endless, eternal fall, was black.
She sits and looks at him. Her hands are spotted with old rust. He kneels and touches her face. Her expression flutters, hard and soft. Her vulnerability, innocent of its own exposure, tugs at him.
He presses his lips to her spotted fingers. She looks suddenly uncertain.
"I do," he says, and it's the truth. She still fails to understand.
He leans and kisses her, taking her whole.
-end-